Pakistan restores judge

SAEED SHAH and JONATHAN S. LANDAYMcClatchy Newspapers

Published Tuesday, March 17, 2009

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- Pakistan's government capitulated Monday to opposition demands to restore judicial independence after the country's army and the U.S. refused to give President Asif Ali Zardari backing, Pakistani and U.S. officials said.

A tumultuous week that began with protest marches could have exploded into violence Monday, but instead the government agreed at 6 a.m. to the demonstrators' key demand: to reinstate Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry, the former chief justice.

The announcement by Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani came hours before a massive throng of lawyers, opposition parties and civil activists was due to descend on Islamabad for an indefinite sit-in until Chaudhry was restored.

"This is the first victory for the people in the history of Pakistan," said Hamid Khan, one of the leaders of the lawyers' movement. "This is the first time that the ruling elite had to bow to the pressure of the people."

U.S. and Pakistani officials said Pakistan's army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, who had frequently met with Zardari and Gilani in recent days, played a key role in defusing the confrontation. Kayani called on Gilani late Sunday night, and both went to see Zardari at about midnight for a meeting that ended at 1 a.m.

U.S. officials thought there were two reasons for Zardari's capitulation.

The first was Kayani warned Zardari he wouldn't be able to count on the military to confront the demonstrators and prevent them from marching into central Islamabad.

"I don't think the military would fire on Pakistani demonstrators and political types," a senior U.S. official said. A second U.S. official said the Obama administration, in contacts with Kayani, framed Pakistan's internal conflict as a constitutional issue, implying it supported Chaudhry's reinstatement. The message, he said, was "on issues of constitutional rights, it is . . . for Pakistan to decide."

The two officials requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the diplomacy.

Second, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made it clear in a telephone call to Zardari he couldn't count on the unqualified support of the U.S., unlike his predecessor, retired Gen. Pervez Musharraf, who had the full backing of the Bush administration when he launched a similar crackdown on Chaudhry's supporters in 2007.

"The message to Zardari was that 'it's not 'till death do us part." It put him on notice that he could not push this stuff. We have been pushing him since the beginning of this crisis to find a solution," the senior U.S. official said. "And as he looked where he was going with this, he realized that he could not win."

"With the administration's blessing, Kayani played the key role in this, and he left Zardari with no choice except to give in to the protesters and Nawaz and reinstate Chaudhry," said a veteran U.S. intelligence expert on South Asia, referring to opposition leader Nawaz Sharif. Kayani has "been as nervous as a cat about this whole thing, but his concern is about tearing the army apart. His political ambitions are limited to where he is now." The expert spoke anonymously because he wasn't authorized to speak on the record.

Pakistanis savored a victory Monday for democracy and the people's power, the culmination of a two-year-long struggle by lawyers for judicial independence, embodied by Chaudhry, an activist judge whom Musharraf fired in 2007.

The resolution of the dispute offered a new chance for stability in nuclear-armed Pakistan, which has lurched from crisis to crisis. Judicial independence has become the burning political issue in the country, drawing attention from the battle against Islamic extremism, which has exasperated Washington and other Western allies. The opposition challenge had threatened to lead to bloody clashes and paralyze Pakistan.

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A spontaneous carnival erupted Monday around Chaudhry's official residence in Islamabad, where he continued to live despite being ousted from the top judicial job. The celebrations lasted all day and into the night. Lawyers, political activists and ordinary Pakistanis thronged around the home, playing drums, waving the flags of their political parties and chanting slogans. At one point, a uniformed bagpipe band turned up to play in the manicured lawns of Chaudhry's house.